Islamophobia and Democracy: The Historical 200+ Year War Context between the Crescent and the Cross

SPECIAL REPORT SERIES by Lady Michelle Jennifer Santos – TSR Founder & Publisher and Strategy/Peace Negotiator with the UN Security Council Special Envoy to the Arab Nations

August 21, 2011 (TSR) – The calamity of Islamophobic culture and policy, used by the far-right parties to stoke fear, blame and hatred, in the West and the international community at large, is not merely the sum of the individual tragedies of abuse and alienation nor even the generation of pretexts for further war and apartheid. We are witnessing a global tragedy unfolding before our eyes in which the vital contributions of Islam – and religion generally – to solving the international, moral, social and political crises of the modern world is purposely being diluted from our memories, thanks to the imperialistic propaganda at hand.

Islamophobia refers to unfounded fear of and hostility towards Islam. The term seems to date back to the late 1980s,but came into common usage after the September 11, 2001 attacks in the United States to refer to types of political dialogue that appeared prejudicially resistant to pro-Islamic argument. Such fear and hostility leads to discriminations against Muslims, exclusion of Muslims from mainstream political or social process, stereotyping, the presumption of guilt by association, and finally hate crimes. Islamophobia as a term and as a phenomena gained currency in part due to the popular thesis developed by Francis Fukuyama and Samuel Huntington that argued about an impending clash of civilization between Islam and the West. When 9-11 happened, the people already predisposed to viewing Islam with suspicion jumped on this bandwagon and through a multitude of primarily right wing outlets have been successful in creating a climate of extreme prejudice, suspicion and fear against Muslims. This sentiment has also been aided by many pro-Israeli commentators such as Daniel Pipes, Steve Emerson, Judith Miller, and Bernard Lewis, not to mention the gimmick-driven Pamela Geller, among many others.

Through the mass media and political rhetoric, the international community have become immune to reading the redundant usage and coupling of Islamic or Muslim with the inappropriate terms of ‘extremist’, ‘fundamentalist’, ‘fanatic’ and ‘terrorist’. Indeed, Muslim men were part of the World Trade Center attacks. However, these Muslims are limited to a specific number, they are specifically called Islamo-fascists. The widespread use of one’s religious adherence becomes a vital and necessary factor in describing any individual or group that is featured in a news story, but Islam, in general, being unfairly targeted will remain valid. There are many “religious” groups who have committed crimes against Humanity such as the Jewish Israeli guards who have opened fire on the West Bank or Roman Catholic Basque separatists who focus their terrorist activities on the Spanish tourist trade. Why can we not discriminate and villify those too?

In the blaming of “Islam” for a minority of extremists, for which in the forthcoming reports will prove that the West funded and nurtured, we are in danger of suffocating the seedling of real self-determination and true sovereign rights due to the hostile cultural climates these war criminal masterminds are propagating in order to justify a “humanitarian just war”.

There is a complete marginalisation of Muslims condemning the attacks and you have a fictional Muslim community that sits comfortably within the established norms of Islamophobic expectation. But the mainstream media mostly seeks out those with the loudest voices who fit their own agenda rather than fitting the agenda around the more significant voices, deliberately suggesting a cynicism where all Muslims (or any group they wish to target) have synonymous views, as we are currently experiencing in their journalistic pro-American policy editing of the news. The saddest part is how the international community willingly accepts the media’s accessible “experts” and news as ‘authoritative, immediate, realistic and authentic’, when in reality, Islam is completely obscured by Islamophobic assertions.

Mainstream media news has become a hyper-realistic construct, where the real and the imaginary consciously and continuously collapsing into each other. We need to ask what is real and what is imaginary, and must question how accurate, and indeed responsible a decision was it for news agencies to show what is really happening on the ground?

Check these reports we have published here, as no mainstream media will report the massive support for Gaddafi:

In the next report, I will write more and prove to you, WE, The Santos Republic, is much more trusted source than even BBC, CNN and Al Jazeera for we will only deliver responsible journalism and do not serve any agenda apart from telling the TRUTH.

The editors within these newsrooms are very talented in removing vital information in order to suit corporatists’ interests that pays them as what they have done when declaring Barack Obama as the winner in the presidential election coverage. Due to manicured editing, the distinction between fact and fiction has become increasingly distorted, purposely to fit a particular agenda in preference to relevant knowledge. Thus, Humanity is discombobulated, through blind acceptance of falsified truths as authority, immediate, realistic and authentic.

Agendas and beliefs that are inappropriately and irresponsibly incorporated, through “responsible”, “accurate”, “realistic” and “truth” are more or less overshadowed by other events and circumstances, and plays into the overall scheme of both the news and media agencies, and indeed, their respective governments as its output.

Explicit villification of Islam prompts many concerns. For a decade now, it has become the perceived shadow self of the modernized and progressive West. Islamophobia has become increasingly natural, and paradoxically, its manifestations are becoming more explicit and extreme. What the media has shown us over the past decade is that at its very core, the very heart of much of its reporting and coverage of issues connected, however remotely to Islam, is submerged in closed-minded derogatory views: That Islam is retrogressively backward and unidimensional; inherently separate and other to the West; the perpetual and inferior enemy to modernization and Western values; and manipulative as an ideology to solely oppress and control. When I tackle the largest financial heist done to Mr. Gaddafi and the Libyan Sovereign Wealth Fund, I will talk finance and “progress” in much more in depth and in fuller context since the media drowned facts.

Islamophobia is not only plain ignorance, but dangerous because it does not respect the individual. It is an indiscriminate prejudice that tarnishes every Muslim irrespective of social, ethnic or cultural orientation. And it is equally true that it has its effects on the motives and attitudes of millions of individuals, that in turn determines their behavior to and beliefs about Muslims.

Demonization of Islam warrants serious analogies being made to the representation of the Jews in such early twentieth century literature as Hitler’s “Mein Kampf”, where gross exaggeration and dehumanisation had extremely dangerous consequences. I can’t help but compare society’s contemporary hateful attitudes towards Islam to the one that prompted Germany’s Kristallnacht in 1938. As we saw then, once the enemy was so dehumanised and parasitical, what justification was needed to persecute and finally exterminate it?

This deadly societal cancer is significant that the actions of a remote and minority group of Muslims in another part of the world has been enough to influence and mobilize others to attack Muslim women because they wear the hijab, paralyze men because of their religion or firebomb places of worship. We see this with the Oslo Bombing on July 22, 2011. The first Europeans blamed were Islamic terrorists, when Breivik is very much connected to the Israelis and Zionists. This is the time to differentiate and apportion blame at those sources of irresponsibility and this is what we must do.

There is a saying that goes, ‘the first casualty of war is truth’. Since this is truly the case, my reports will now and in the future clarify and differentiate the war criminals and it is also important that the war against Islamophobia is one of those that needs to be fought against with truth. With that in mind, allow me to teach you a little bit of real history.

Confucius said, “Study the past if you would define the future.” Humanity has been educated to be demoralized and we are now seeing the “benefits” of that everywhere. We must honor and study the Ancient wisdom of our past in order to have a better world than what the Corporatists are offering.

The following are recommended documentary films to give you historical context of what is going on at our present day. The massive report part 1, I am doing will cover about 100 years of planning to our international crises we are experiencing. At the culmination of all my reports, you will then see, that everything is interconnected. You can perfectly see it in this video where Gen. Wes Clark was interviewed, Islamophobia has to be used as the phantom enemy to justify American hegemonic plans. Libya and Syria, part of a bigger puzzle and for their Armageddon plans, has been planned 9 days after September 11, 2001.

(NOTE: When General Wes Clark found out my report about Libya, they made sure to remove the evidentiary video and therefore we are replacing it with this video: below. This report triggered a closer surveillance of The Santos Republic and the “Powers that be” war with yours truly. – Lady Michelle-Jennifer Santos, May 6, 2012)

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I have provided the first part video from History Channel’s The Crusades: The Crescent and the Cross with this report

My favorite current historian is Bettany Hugheswho speaks on subjects as diverse as Helen of Troy and the origins of female ‘Sophia’ to concepts of Time in the Islamic world. Her book, Helen of Troy is the first serious and wide-ranging book ever to have been written about Helen, published in 2005. She also finished her book, The Hemlock Cup: Socrates, Athens and the Search for the Good Life.

Anyway, Ms. Hughes did this wonderful documentary film called When the Moors (Muslims) Ruled Europe and I am including it here because I strongly feel that the international community need to learn real facts and historical TRUTHS of what Islam contributed – from poetry, music, art, architecture, medicine and many other things that we use and know today that we take for granted, just as how much the Chinese has contributed to our current civilization.

WATCH THE FULL DOCUMENTARY AND YOU WILL FIND WHAT YOU HAVE BEEN TAUGHT WAS TWISTED PROPAGANDA:

Personal remarks: Well, those of you who know me, do attest that I am a huge fan of Socrates and his no-nonsense approach to TRUTH. You know that book will be part of my personal favorites, besides being a fan of Ms. Hughes’ work. It takes a lot of energy to dig TRUTH, you know, as what you can see in what I do.

Let me tell you why I am a fan of Ms. Hughes: We both share the same TRUTHS about Democracy. I am very grateful for her work because it helps me put things into context for everyone as I find that majority of these elected leaders running our countries are not really leaders, but followers of the same hype and distorted truths. Ms. Hughes gives me historical context of what I am dealing with politically. You will soon see as I proceed doing these reports because the “democracy” and “regime change” America and every liberal out there promoting and forcing on everyone is the same a MOBOCRACY (with hidden agenda of DOMINANCE and CONTROL, One World Government). When I start delving into this, in the future you will understand the reason I am working on a “Universal Fusionism” and why I am a proponent of “Republic”. These can get technical, so let us just deal with “Democracy” hype train that majority is on without even completely understanding what it is. All are just fed in the schools, media and politicians like some magical and perfect system, when it never was! Somehow, people use this word and mean something else. Therefore, when I said DEMOCRACY IS DEAD, it is a layered message.

Here is Ms. Hughes personal commentary on Democracy published in the Telegraph (with my bold highlights):

“The word democracy has become ubiquitous. It is used to justify everything from regime change to parking meters. The internet is drenched with talk of e-democracy, open democracy, local democracy, consensus democracy, liberal democracy, illiberal democracy.

If this is going to become one of the most exploited words on the planet, we need to be clear about what we mean when we use it. Democracy is too potent and exciting an idea to be trifled with.

We take the term from ancient Athens, but Athenian democracy, the product of an age remembered as egalitarian and high-minded, bore almost no resemblance to ours. In the ancient world, some thought that Demokratia meant not the rule of “the whole people” but the rule of the mob.

From the harbour at Piraeus, Athenian oarsmen rowed out to claim new territories in the name of democracy. They were not always welcome. At Melos, all men were slaughtered, all women and children enslaved when the island preferred to “put our trust in our gods, to try to save ourselves” and preserve their liberty rather than accept Athenian-style democracy.

Little surprise, then, that when recording the “free cities” in league with Athens, there is sometimes a slip of the chisel: instead of “our allies” on inscriptions, the Athenians can refer to “the cities that we rule”.

None of these details diminishes the Athenian achievement, but they do nuance it. We love Golden Ages. It comforts us to think that, in a distant time and place, mankind achieved some kind of high-minded perfection – a utopia we can replicate.

As a society, we want to remember that, long ago, democracy, liberty and freedom of speech were created as touchstones for civilisation. We uphold them as pure and robust entities. But we owe it to ourselves to recognise the Realpolitik.

First, Athenian democracy was a dead end. Athenian direct democracy was transparent, face to face. Every adult Athenian citizen was a politician; he could propose motions, vote in the assembly – rule and be ruled in turn.

Kratos meant hold or grip, and the Ancient Athenian would have been under no illusion that he had a real, direct grasp on power. Six thousand citizens at a time could fit on the bare rock of the Pnyx, where they voted on how they should run their lives. There was no notion of individual liberty – all was enacted for to koinon, the commonality.

I remember listening to an American on Radio 4 shouting that, in a democracy, of course kids had the right to buy cans of spray paint and do what they liked with them. Athenians would have hooted: the babbling of a maniac.

The democratic club in Athens was also very small. It was only Athenian men over 18 who could vote: no foreigners, and eventually – following reforms by Pericles – only those whose parents had both been born in the city.

Athenian women were less than second-class citizens – Aristotle considers them sub-standard. They were thought to pollute. Female bodies were porous: evil could come oozing from open orifices, their mouths and eyes. And for this reason they were kept not only covered but veiled. The first hard evidence we have of the use of the full face veil comes from Athens.

What London and Washington do share with Ancient Athens, across a gap of 2,500 years, is a firm belief in the power of words – ancient Athens was littered with inscribed stone stele, all showing the workings of the democracy – plus a passionate relationship with one word in particular. As time went on, Demokratia was worshipped as a goddess. In Athens’s Agora Museum, you can still see her, carved on a stone stele, crowning the people with a wreath.

There are other similarities between then and now; a delight in litigation among them. Athens could expect to hear more than 40 cases a week by anything up to 6,000 jurors. Our adversarial political process is also prefigured by the Greek belief in argument and counter-argument.

Athenian society was deeply competitive. The word for competition, agon, gives us “agony”. We have whips in the Commons possibly because, through the streets of Athens, slaves, with ropes dipped in red paint, would tickle the reluctant up to the Pnyx to vote.

The Athenians, like us, were fascinated by this thing democracy, and wanted to find deeper tap-roots for their new political system, fantasising that the origins of the way they were stretched over the millennia to the Age of Heroes. They invented myths about their local superhero Theseus, calling him the world’s first democrat.

Yet as an ideology, Athenian democracy’s horizons were narrow. The rule of the people emerged through chance, not design; it was a tentative, fluctuating system that existed before a word was dreamt up to nominate the unusual situation.

I have no doubt that the Athenians of the fifth century bc would be slack-jawed to learn that Demokratia was being marketed around the globe. Liberty, democracy and freedom of speech were established as means in Athens, not as ends in themselves.

In Ancient Greece, those who preferred a private to a publicly aware life were categorised idiotes. Idiots indeed. Equally idiotic to peddle chimerical promises of “democracy”.

The rule, or grip of the whole people is not a panacea, it cannot be identikitted out across the globe; it is too important, too strong to be commodified. Liberty, equality, freedom of speech, human rights, the greater good, universal suffrage are all the finest goals, but true democracy, the absolute rule of the people, is not universally or necessarily the finest way to achieve them.

Remember, when the Ancient Greeks imagined Demokratia a goddess, they did not abstract her. She was made incarnate. The Athenians knew that the gods and goddesses walked the earth. They ate, they drank, they made love, they argued.

When they made democracy divine, they also admitted that she was flawed.

Remember, too, the men of Athens, fired up by their solidarity, voting to go to war, to slaughter “barbarians” and fellow Greeks alike. When we talk of bringing democracy to the world, we must be careful what we wish for.”

The historical distortion perpetrated by many mainstream propagandists have contributed to many of atrocities worldwide. It is very important that Humanity get this Islamophobia straight, thus, as we move along in these report series, we will give historical context of the current events, for many of what’s been going on did not just erupt overnight. These agendas have been going on for years.

Napoleon Bonaparte said, “History is the version of past events, a set of lies, that people have decided to agree upon.” Indeed, this is what we are witnessing through mainstream media distortion and withholding of facts with what is truly happening in the Middle East. It is therefore my intention to rectify these distortions. There is a lot to learn from our past in order for us to find appropriate resolutions to all Humanity’s woes. I am a huge advocate of contextual substance. With all the fanciful and manipulated sound bites done by communication strategists, the international community have purposely not been given full truth about the state of the planet.

Here it is in a nutshell regarding religion: When the Emperor of the Roman Empire converted to Christianity, that reverberated throughout the territories under Roman control. In far too many cases, you either converted or faced death. That meant a widely enormous influence in Europe, which colonized the western world. When the Europeans settled in the Americas, they brought their religion with them. Practically, everyone under their control had to convert to Christianity, sometimes by very brutal force, as witnessed during the Crusadesand Inquisitions in Europe, and the genocide of Native Americans. Christianity, aided by Judaism, were in full control during the initiation of the Atlantic slave trade.

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“Europeans not only began to colonize most of the world, they also colonized information abt the world. They colonized the Bible, and all complimentary images that non-European people held of themselves. Most effective of all of these colonized images was their colonization of the image of God. Through missionaries, adventurers, free-booters and slave traders …they began to propagate the concept that God favored them over other people. They were saying, in essence, that all Europeans were the chosen people of God.”

- John Henrik Clarke, (Christopher Columbus and the Afrikan Holocaust: Slavery and the Rise of European Capitalism )

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Let us revisit various authors that many universities, politicians, public relations executives using the fundamentalist historians, such as Thomas F. Madden whose job is to put western agenda. Many of our academic textbooks are constantly distorted in order to brainwash our next generations by constant revision of real history (deleting truths and facts) in order to fit imperialistic and neo-colonialistic aims and manipulation.

Thomas F. Madden’s historical thinking is not a new fallacious concept introduced by contemporary Christian revisionists but has been prevalent since the emergence of Islam on world stage. For many centuries, the Christian historians and orientalists directly promulgated lies and fabrications about Islam in order to instil prejudice against the Muslims. And yet in the modern age, Christian fundamentalist historians still continue to carry the flag and propagate indirectly their revisionist theories regarding Islam. A summarized article of Thomas F. Madden’s book entitled A Concise History of the Crusades has been published attempting to debunk the old-aged “misconceptions” of the Crusades. He chronologically discusses the major events of the initial Crusade until the 5th Crusade. Let us address the deceptive methods riddled in his article and pay attention to key propaganda elements. He writes:

Christians in the eleventh century were not paranoid fanatics. Muslims really were gunning for them. While Muslims can be peaceful, Islam was born in war and grew the same way. From the time of Mohammed, the means of Muslim expansion was always the sword.

The 21st Century Crusades

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“Libya has natural resources, especially oil, the largest in Africa and is the fourth producer of gas. This raises the question: would not it all this tantalizing NATO until they’d bothered to conduct military operations there? Libya’s oil resources is the main target of NATO military operations in the North African country. The UN Resolution 1973 is a medieval call to crusade.”

Here, Thomas F. Madden asserts and attempts to justify that medieval Christians were defending themselves from the Muslim “aggression”. Sounds familiar? Furthermore, he also allegedly states that Islam was born in a war giving the reader the impression that the Prophet Muhammad and the early Muslim community provoked the war between the Arab pagans and the Muslims. This is far from the truth. Prophet Muhammad peacefully proclaimed the Message of the One True God and gained many followers. These early Muslims consisted of sons and brothers of the richest men in Makkah and also included slaves and the poor. As a result of their firm belief in Allah (God in Arabic), they were subjected to persecution. The Quraish (Arab tribe) restricted the people from buying or selling anything to the Muslims. They imposed economic and social boycott on them. They even prohibited Makkans from entering into marriages with them. Since Makkah was the land of the trade, the early Muslims couldn’t endure this hardship. Consequently, the Prophet Muhammad sent the Muslims to Abyssinia where a just Christian king ruled. The Quraish soon discovered the place that they emigrated to and thus send one of their tribesmen to the court of Najashi in order to ask the king to hand over the Muslims. Ja’far, who was one of the Muslims, was permitted to refute the accusations of the Quraish. He said:

“O King of Abyssinia! We worshipped idols in the past and let our lives be consumed by fun and sport. To inflict cruelty upon the weak and the poor was our pastime. We were wrapped in abysmal darkness when Muhammad (Peace and blessings of Allah be upon him)” bin Abdullah was born among us. He led us to righteousness and instructed us to shun idolatry. He called us to Allah Almighty. He showed us to be merciful and told us to abstain from evil and shelter the weak and poor”.

“O King, we were a people steeped in ignorance, worshipping idols, eating un-sacrificed carrion, committing abominations, and harming the weak without reason until Allah sent us a Messenger from out of our midst, one whose lineage we knew well. His veracity, worthiness of trust and his integrity was also known to us. He called us unto Allah, that we should testify to His Oneness and worship Him and renounce what we and our fathers had worshipped in the way of stones and idols; and he commanded us to speak truly, to fulfil our promises, to respect the ties of kinship and the rights of our neighbours, and to refrain from crimes and from bloodshed. So we worship Allah alone, setting naught beside Him, counting as forbidden what He hath forbidden and as licit what He hath allowed. Our people turned against us, and have persecuted us to make us forsake our religion and revert from the worship of Allah to the worship of idols.

“We believed him, but O King! these, who have come to arrest us are idol-worshippers. They worship idols of stone and wood, inflict barbarism upon the weak. These people have persecuted, pelted and injured our Prophet (Peace and blessings of Allah be upon him)”.

The above quote indisputably proves that the early Muslims where rather peaceful servants of God who only promoted peace and only defended themselves from the pagan aggressions. Thomas F. Madden then further claims that the expansion of Islam was only achieved through the use of the sword. Not only was this myth prevalent in the Frankish Europe, but it is still prevalent in the present age in the minds of many Christians. The well known author, James Michener, writes:

No other religion in history spread so rapidly as Islam. The West has widely believed that this surge of religion was made possible by the sword. But no modern scholar accepts this idea, and the Qur’an is explicit in the support of the freedom of conscience. [1]

This misconception is also addressed by K. S. Ramakrishna Rao who writes:

My problem to write this monograph is easier, because we are not generally fed now on that (distorted) kind of history and much time need not be spent on pointing out our misrepresentations of Islam. The theory of Islam and sword, for instance, is not heard now in any quarter worth the name. The principle of Islam that “there is no compulsion in religion” is well known. [2]

And Lawrence E. Browne who states:

Incidentally these well-established facts dispose of the idea so widely fostered in Christian writings that the Muslims, wherever they went, forced people to accept Islam at the point of the sword. [3]

Professor Arnold Thomas addresses this widely-held belief in one of his books. He writes:

To give any account of these campaigns is beyond the scope of the present work, but it is important to show that Muhammad, when he found himself at the head of a band of armed followers, was not transformed at once, as some would have us believe, from a peaceful preacher into a fanatic, sword in hand, forcing his religion on whomsoever he could. [4]

The Oxford Illustrated History of Christianity states:

Christianity has largely misunderstood the nature of Islamic militancy. The fiction that Islam was preached by the sword and Christianity by the lamb and the dove appeared early in Christian writings and still exercises a powerful influence upon the popular perception of Islam. Christian polemicists were quick to contrast the idealized life of Christ with that of Muhammad and his followers, ‘who ceased not to go forth in battle and rapine, to smite with the sword, to seize the little ones, and ravish wives and maidens’. [5]

So in the light of the above mentioned evidence, was the mean of the Muslim expansion always the sword? Ira Zepp Jr, who is another Non-Muslim author, answers the aforementioned question:

It is unfortunate that Islam has been stereotyped as the ‘religion of the sword’ or that Islam was ‘spread by the sword.’ The historical reality is that the expansion of Islam was usually by persuasion and not by military power. In any case, Islam cannot be forced on anyone; if profession of the shahadah [i.e. the declaration of Islam] is forced on someone, it is not true Islam.[6]

Thomas F. Madden further writes:

But, in traditional Islam, Christian and Jewish states must be destroyed and their lands conquered. When Mohammed was waging war against Mecca in the seventh century, Christianity was the dominant religion of power and wealth. As the faith of the Roman Empire, it spanned the entire Mediterranean, including the Middle East, where it was born. The Christian world, therefore, was a prime target for the earliest caliphs, and it would remain so for Muslim leaders for the next thousand years.

Thomas here conceals the status of Byzantine Empire and the corruption that was predominately during that period. The Muslims never introduced the expansion for the sake of grabbing lands but they conquered the other nations so that they could free the oppressed inhabitants of the Byzantine Empire and exterminate the ignorance and promote free-thinking. And once they conquered these nations, they never imposed their beliefs on the inhabitants since it contradicts the principle of Islam that there is no compulsion in religion.

Personal Remarks: Please put Byzantine Empire in your mental notes. We will visit this when I tie it with the future reports as this triggered a lot in the Muslim world when the western leaders used it to subtly insult Islam in the mainstream media months ago. This is the very reason why I had to post this first before I post the next 2 reports.

Edward Gibbon who is regarded by many as the best contemporary historian comments on the Islamic expansion by describing it as:

one of the most memorable revolutions which has impressed a new and lasting character on the nations of the globe. [7]

Dr. Lebon stated:

“The early Muslim conquests might have blurred their common sense and made them commit the sorts of oppression which conquerors usually commit, and thus ill-treat the subdued and compel them to embrace the Faith they wanted to spread all over the globe. Had they done so, all nations, which were still not under their control, might have turned against them, and they might have suffered what had befallen the Crusaders in their conquest of Syria lately. However, the early Caliphs, who enjoyed a rare ingenuity which was unavailable to the propagandists of new faiths, realized that laws and religion cannot be imposed by force. Hence they were remarkably kind in the way they treated the peoples of Syria, Egypt, Spain and every other country they subdued, leaving them to practise their laws and regulations and beliefs and imposing only a small Jizya in return for their protection and keeping peace among them. In truth, nations have never known merciful and tolerant conquerors like the Muslims.” [8]

He further adds,

“The mercy and tolerance of the conquerors were among the reasons for the spread of their conquests and for the nations’ adoptions of their Faith and regulations and language, which became deeply rooted, resisted all sorts of attack and remained even after the disappearance of the Arabs’ control on the world stage, though historians deny the fact. Egypt is the most evident proof of this. It adopted what the Arabs had brought over, and reserved it. Conquerors before the Arabs — the Persians, Greeks and Byzantines — could not overthrow the ancient Pharaoh civilization and impose what they had brought instead. [9]

This is also evidently in the statement of Count de Castri. He writes:

“The spread of Islam and the submission to its authority seem to have another reason in the continents of Asia and North Africa. It was the despotism of Constantinople which exercised extreme tyranny, and the injustice of rulers was too much for people to bear…[10]

So thus, it was due the abundance of good in medieval Christendom that opened the doors of Islamic Expansion. This also resulted to a mass conversion to Islam under no coercion in which Ms. Hughes proves in her documentary, When the Moors (Muslims) Ruled Europe (watch it here).

Personal Remarks: In comparison to Christian organizations, as a former Christian minister, we were ‘programmed’ to ‘self-righteously ‘ “evangelize” and baptize for Jesus, or everyone will go to hell. In my own and other people’s personal experiences, we find much more animosity and lack of compassion among “God” or “Jesus” followers.

Professors Thomas Arnold again comments that:

“This misinterpretation of the Muslim wars of conquest has arisen from the assumption that wars waged for the extension of Muslim domination over the lands of the unbelievers implied that the aim in view was their conversion.” [11]

One example to note is the conquest of Spain. In 711 CE, an oppressed Christian chief named Julian went to Musa ibn Nusair, the governor of North Africa, with a plea for help against the tyrannical Christian Visigoth ruler of Spain, Roderick. Musa responded by sending the young general Tariq bin Ziyad with an army of 7000 troops, burned their fleets, and defeated the 30,000 Visigoths. One of his remarkable speech was after burning his fleet — “The sea is behind you, and the enemy is ahead of you, and you have no escape but the truth and patience.” A new atmosphere of toleration began for the Jews. The Muslims had few men and needed help in every city they conquered to maintain their rule. The Jews helped the Muslims because they represented an opportunity to free themselves from the Visigoths. The Christians and Jews were liberated in Al-Andalusia. The Syrians welcomed the Muslims as their liberators since they liberated from their religious trouble and also relieved them of the burdensome taxes that that were placed on their backs. They praised the Muslims by announcing publically, “Praise be to God, who delivered us from the unjust Byzantines and put us under the rule of the Muslims”. A great amount of them converted to the Islamic faith. This liberation goes in accordance with the Quranic verse:

And why should you not fight in the cause of Allah and of those who, being weak, are ill-treated (and oppressed)? Men, women, and children, whose cry is: ‘Our Lord! Rescue us from this town, whose people are oppressors; and raise for us from Yourside one who will protect; and raise for us from Your side one who will help!’) (An-Nisaa’ 4:75).

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The 21st Century Crusade Context, PLEASE DISTRIBUTE THEM around the world:

The First Crusade was launched by Pope Urban II by announcing that Muslim forces were taking over Christian nations. He further prepared the Christians to bring back the lands under the Christian by retaliate a Crusade against the Muslims. The Pope attempted to deceive the masses that they were fighting for a good cause but only a handful responded to his call whilst joined the ranks to pillage and plunder, or to escape their feudal lords. Professor of History, Joel T. Rosenthal, contributed an article at Encarta Encyclopaedia stating:

They knew little about the Byzantine Empire or its religion, Eastern Orthodox Christianity. Few Crusaders understood or had much sympathy for the Eastern Orthodox religion, which did not recognize the pope, used the Greek language rather than Latin, and had very different forms of art and architecture. They knew even less about Islam or Muslim life. For some the First Crusade became an excuse to unleash savage attacks in the name of Christianity on Jewish communities along the Rhine. [12]

But Thomas negates this significant detail and persists on praising the so-called chivalry knights which reveals his psychological mechanism, namely denial to affirm the true nature of the crusaders.

A medieval image of Peter the Hermit, leading knights, soldiers and women toward Jerusalem during the First Crusade

He then cites quotations of another revisionist named Jonathan Riley-Smith who is known for his islamophobic works. Riley-Smith argues that “crusading” was understood as “an act of love” but according to the ‘The Catholic Encyclopedia’, the crusading was understood as:

Wars undertaken in pursuance of a vow, and directed against infidels, i.e. against Mohammedans, pagans, heretics, or those under the ban of excommunication. [13]

Thomas also concealed the speech by Pope Urban II who started the first Crusade by calling for colonization of the Muslim world:

For you must hasten to carry aid to your brethren dwelling in the East, who need your help, which they have often asked. For the Turks, a Persian people, have attacked them I exhort you with earnest prayer – not I, but God – that, as heralds of Christ, you urge men by frequent exhortation, men of all ranks, knights as well as foot soldiers, rich as well as poor, to hasten to exterminate this vile race from the lands of your brethren Christ commands it. And if those who set out thither should lose their lives on the way by land, or in crossing the sea, or in fighting the pagans, their sins shall be remitted. Oh what a disgrace, if a race so despised, base, and the instrument of demons, should so overcome a people endowed with faith in the all-powerful God, and resplendent with the name of Christ. Let those who have been accustomed to make private war against the faithful carry on to a successful issue a war against the infidels. Let those who for a long time have been robbers now become soldiers of Christ. Let those who fought against brothers and relatives now fight against these barbarians. Let them zealously undertake the journey under the guidance of the Lord. [14]

Compare this with the claim of Thomas who asserted:

It was the Crusaders’ task to defeat and defend against them. That was all. Muslims who lived in Crusader-won territories were generally allowed to retain their property and livelihood, and always their religion.

It is quite an essential detail to leave out the genocide preached by Pope Urban II, especially if it discredits the whole argument that the Crusades were acts of righteousness (these days we use the word, “humanitarian” or “just”). When these “righteous” Crusaders arrived at Jerusalem, they had no mercy on the inhabitants, whether Muslims, Jews or their Christian brethren. Philip Schaff writes:

The scenes of carnage which followed belong to the many dark pages of Jerusalem’s history and showed how, in the quality of mercy, the crusading knight was far below the ideal of Christian perfection. The streets were choked with the bodies of the slain. The Jews were burnt with their synagogues…. As if to enhance the spectacle of pitiless barbarity, Saracen (i.e. Muslims) prisoners were forced to clear the streets of the dead bodies and blood to save the city from pestilence. “They wept and transported the dead bodies out of Jerusalem,” is the heartless statement of Robert the Monk. … “They cut down with the sword,” said William [archbishop] of Tyre, “every one whom they found in Jerusalem, and spared no one. The victors were covered with blood from head to foot.” In the next breath, speaking of the devotion of the Crusaders, the archbishop adds, “It was a most affecting sight which filled the heart with holy joy to see the people tread the holy places in the fervor of an excellent devotion.” [15]

This horrendous description automatically refutes the claim that most Muslims were spared. They did not stop at the Muslims but advanced further by exterminating the Jews and the Orient Christians who lived peacefully under the Muslim rule. They took the Muslim women as captives and raped them. Philip Schaff further writes:

The illegitimate offspring of the Crusaders by Moslem women, called pullani, were a degenerate race, marked by avarice, faithlessness, and debauchery. [16]

In Daimbert’s comments in the Official Summary of the 1st Crusade, he notes that many crusaders boasted how they rode in the blood of their enemies, whether they were children or women:

And, if you desire to know what was done about the enemy whom we found there, know that in the portico of Solomon and his Temple, our men rode in the blood of the Saracens (i.e. Muslims) up to the knees of the horses. [17]

One witness observed:

…there [in front of Solomon’s temple] was such a carnage that our people were wading ankle-deep in the blood of our foes, and after that “happily and crying for joy” our people marched to our Saviour’s tomb, to honour it and to pay off our debt of gratitude.

In the words of The Archbishop of Tyre, he wrote:

It was impossible to look upon the vast numbers of the slain without horror; everywhere lay fragments of human bodies, and the very ground was covered with the blood of the slain. It was not alone the spectacle of headless bodies and mutilated limbs strewn in all directions that roused the horror of all who looked upon them. Still more dreadful was it to gaze upon the victors themselves, dripping with blood from head to foot, an ominous sight which brought terror to all who met them. It is reported that within the Temple enclosure alone about ten thousand infidels perished. [18]

Havoc was wreaked in the city. Philip Schaff notes:

The Christian occupation of Palestine did not bring with it a reign of peace. The kingdom was torn by the bitter intrigues of barons and ecclesiastics, while it was being constantly threatened from without. The inner strife was the chief source of weakness. [19]

Encyclopaedia of Britannica states:

The great Muslim sanctuaries became Christian churches, and in 1149 the Church of the Holy Sepulchre as it exists today was consecrated. Muslims and Jews were barred from living in the city. [20]

So thus in the light of the above cited evidence, Muslims and Jews were barred from living in the city. Their intolerant policies alienated the local populace. One of the sons of Islam recaptured Jerusalem and announcing that the Jews are allowed to return and live peacefully under the rule of the Muslims.

The German-Jewish historian of the Nineteenth Century, Heinrich Graetz stated that the Sultan, “opened the whole kingdom to the persecuted Jews, so they came to it, seeking security and finding justice.”[21]

The Spanish poet Yehuda al-Harizi, who was in Jerusalem in 1207 CE, described the significance for the Jews of the recovery of Jerusalem by Saladin :

God aroused the spirit of the prince of the Ishmaelites [Saladin], a prudent and courageous man, who came with his entire army, besieged Jerusalem, took it and had it proclaimed throughout the country that he would receive and accept the entire race of Ephraim, wherever they came from. And so we came from all comers of the world to take up residence here. We now live here in the shadow of peace. [22]

The British Historian Karen Armstrong said regarding the capture of Jerusalem:

On 2 October 1187 Saladin and his army entered Jerusalem as conquerors and for the next 800 years Jerusalem would remain a Muslim city… Saladin kept his word, and conquered the city according to the highest Islamic ideals. He did not take revenge for the 1099 massacre, as the Koran advised (16:127), and now that hostilities had ceased he ended the killing (2:193-194). Not a single Christian was killed and there was no plunder. The ransoms were deliberately very low…[23]

P.H. Newby stated:

The Crusades were fascinated by a Muslim leader who possessed virtues they assumed were Christian. To them to his Muslim contemporaries and to us, it still remains remarkable that in times as harsh and bloody as these a man of great power should have been so little corrupted by it.” [24]

The Second Crusade

The second crusade was initiated by Bernard of Clairvaux in direct reply to the Seljuk Muslims who liberated the the town of Edessa. Bernard of Clairvaux declared in launching the Second Crusade, “The Christian glorifies in the death of a pagan, because thereby Christ himself is glorified“. [25]

Pope Innocentius III excommunicating the Albigensians (left), Massacre against the Albigensians by the crusaders (right)

The Seljuk Muslims saved the whole Islamic domains from total extinction in regard to the wholesale slaughter propagated by the crusaders of populations in Maarat Al-Numan, Antioch and Jerusalem. When they (i.e. Crusaders) conquered the town of Tanis in the Nile delta, they literally slaughtered the inhabitants who happened to be the Coptic Christians. Even their brethren couldn’t escape their spree of murder and rapine. More atrocities were commited against the Jews in Mainz, Worms, Cologne, Speyer and Strasburg. The collapse of the second Crusade caused a deep dismay. They attempted to attack Damascus but due the lack of trust between their allies, it failed dramatically. Their wholesale atrocities continues to prove why the Crusades are noted as one of the most egregious wars

The Third Crusade

Before the advent of the third Crusade, Jerusalem was liberated by Saladin who restored peace to the Holy Land and allowing the persecuted Jews to return. Richard and Philip besieged the Muslim city Acre and the city surrendered in 1191. Richard imprisoned the Muslim soldiers alongside with their wives and children and announced a prisoner exchange. A failure of communications in the negotiations resulted in Richard ordering the executions of 3000 Muslim soldiers and their wives and children in front of Saladin and his army. This ferocious act committed by Richard reveals how below the Christian rulers were in comparison with the ideal Christian character.

The Spanish Inquisition

The atrocities of Spanish Inquisition were numerous.

Thomas once again conceals the Spanish Inquisition which primary target were the Jews and the Muslims. They were coercively, and insincerely, converted to Christianity. It does not come as a suprise since Christianity gained most of its followers through forced conversions. Compton’s Concise Encyclopaedia states:

This was a quasi-ecclesiastical tribunal established in 1478 by King Ferdinand and Queen Isabella primarily to examine converted Jews, and later converted Muslims, and punish those who were insincere in the conversion…. The Spanish Inquisition was much harsher than the medieval Inquisition and the death penalty was more often exacted, sometimes in mass autos-da-fe. It judged cases of bigamy, seduction, usury, and other crimes, and was active in Spain and her colonies. Estimates of its victims vary widely, ranging from less than 4,000 to more than 30,000 during its existence…[26]

Encyclopaedia Britannica, states:

The Inquisition’s secret procedures, its eagerness to accept denunciations, its use of torture, the absence of counsel for the accused, the lack of any right to confront hostile witnesses, and the practice of confiscating the property of those who were condemned and sharing it between the Inquisition, the crown, and the accusers – all this inspired great terror, as indeed it was meant to do. [27]

The only sole reason why the Muslims surrendered peacefully was due the fact that the Christian officials made a binding treaty with the Muslims which is also known as the ‘treaty of 1492‘ also known as the Treaty of Granada. In that treaty, the Christian officials promised religious tolerance to the Muslims and the Jews. It was an attempt to win religious tolerance for all the Muslims and Jews left in Spain. Since the Muslims were no longer the rulers of Andalusia, they hoped at least that they would be permitted to worship their Lord, The One God, in the manner presented by the Prophet Muhammad. However, in 1499 CE, Ximenes initiated a campaign to coerce the Muslims of Southern Muslim Spain to Christianity. P. de Gayangos writes:

As a result of his endeavours, it is reported that on 8th December 1499 about three thousand Moors were baptized by him and a leading mosque in Granada was converted into a church. ‘Converts’ were encouraged to surrender their Islamic books, several thousands of which were destroyed by Ximenes in a public bonfire. A few rare books on medicine were kept aside for the University of Alcala. [28]

The Muslims were dragged through the streets of the Muslim quarter for rejecting to adopt the Christian faith. Consequently, the Muslim initiated a riot protesting that the treaty was not honored. P. de Gayangos further writes:

Ximenes immediately denounced the uprising as a rebellion, and claimed that by this the Moors had forfeited all their rights under the terms of capitulation. They should therefore be given the choice between baptism and expulsion. The government agreed with his arguments, and Ximenes then began the mass baptism of the population of Granada, most of whom preferred this fate to the more hazardous one of deportation to Africa. The speed with which the baptisms were carried out meant that there was no time in which to instruct the Moors in the fundamentals of their new religion, so that inevitably most of the new converts became Christian only in name. [29]

Additionally, it has been estimated that at least 50,000 Muslims were forced to convert in the mass baptism of Granada by Ximenes. A small amount of Jews and Muslims were deported to North-Africa. The tolerance of the Muslims for the Jews never decreased, so they aided the Jews in the progress of the deportation. In spite of the circumstances, a new Golden Age flourished in North-Africa. In Andarax, mosques were blown up with gun-powder and at Belfique, all the Muslim men were put to the sword whilst the women were taken as slaves. The Muslim children were separated from their parents and handed over to the Church in order to be brought up as Catholics. The Arabic books including the Qur’an were collected and burnt. H. Kamen writes:

Since the majority of Muslims had been ‘converted’, the offer of emigration was an empty one, and the ‘legal equality’ granted by Ferdinand was but a mockery of the terms of the Treaty of Granada which he had so blatantly permitted to be broken. Behind the words of conciliation and peace, the general intention of the Church to eliminate the practice of Islam was unmistakable, and now that the Muslims of southern Andalusia, or the Moriscos as they were called, were within the jurisdiction of the Spanish Inquisition, the Inquisitors embarked on the task of detecting ‘relapsed heretics’ and secret Muslims. The communities of Muslims which had survived the suppression of the rebellion, or reformed after it, were repeatedly harassed by the Inquisitors. [30]

Thomas writes:

The ancient faith of Christianity, with its respect for women and antipathy toward slavery, not only survived but flourished.

On the contrary, Christianity advocated the support of slavery. The Encyclopaedia of Britannica states:

Judaic and Islamic canonical texts refer frequently to slavery and treat it as a natural condition that might befall anyone. But they view it as a condition that should be gotten over quickly. Islamic practice was based on the assumption that the outsider rapidly became an insider and consequently had to be manumitted after six years. New Testament Christianity, on the other hand, had no prescriptions that slaves be manumitted. Canon law sanctioned slavery. This was attributable at least partially to Christianity’s primary focus on spiritual values and salvation after death rather than on temporal conditions and the present life. Under such a regime it mattered little whether someone was a slave or a free person while living on earth.[31]

In regard to how women are viewed in the Christian tradition, Dr. Sherif Abdel Azeem produced an authentic comparisonof the treatment of women between the Christian and Islamic tradition.

It is quite clear that the nature of many rhetoric we hear today is based on blatant distortions in order to usher an agenda rather than concrete evidence. A thorough analysis of every evidence pertained to the Crusades would conclude that the Crusades were a colonial venture motivated by greed, lack of opportunity in Frankish Europe and territorial expansion, just as what US/France/UK/Israel/NATO is doing in the Middle East per today. Many neo-conservatives, Christian fundamentalists, Corporatists and their controlled mainstream media attempt to justify the wholesale slaughter of millions of innocent people during their 21st Century Crusade by basing discriminative, erroneous and obvious fictitious evidence. It is time for the Christian/Neo-conservative/Neo-liberal revisionist historians to step out of denial, stop changing our history books to brainwash our youth and populations and acknowledge that Christians are not on a moral high ground. We have a lot of work to do, Humanity, as you can see. In order for us to rectify and put all these war crimes into justice, we do need to arm ourselves with substantial facts. Let us not forget our real history so we can know how to shape a better world of harmony, peace, order, common prosperity and justice. It is time to wake up from these lies and half-truths.

______________________________

AUTHOR: Lady Michelle-Jennifer Santos

Lady Michelle-Jennifer Santos is the Founder & Publisher of The Santos Republic. She is also political strategist and analyst, investment consultant and advisor, and the Strategy/Peace Negotiator with the UN Security Council Special Envoy to the Arab Nations involved in brokering peace in the Middle East since 2011. She is also the Principal of MJS Global Group whose core competency is strategy, image/media, branding, geopolitics, international trade and development, communications, intelligence and security, aerospace, technology, entertainment, wealth management, mining, energy, infrastructure, commodities (gold, diamonds, oil and gas, sugar, cement, edible oils, rice, et al), and capital markets. also serves as a Senior Consulting Advisor for DeMatteo Monness LLC, a specialized agency brokerage with equity trading operations in New York and Boston and a member firm of the NASD and clears trades through Goldman Sachs Execution; Clearing LLC. With a background in working for international political campaigns, she is also a public speaker and lecturer on politics and motivational topics. Lady MJ has appeared and been featured in international media outlets (radio, television, print and internet) in Europe and USA such as Fox Business News, NRK, CNBC, CBS and AOL News. You can follow her on Facebook and on Twitter (@mj_santos). You can read more about her here.

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